Casm
by Met Ower
Summary: Inside Hogwarts lurks a powerful entity. Today, it is revealing itself to you. For the first time ever, discover one of the most well hidden secret of Hogwarts.


Disclaimer: I will make absolutely no profits from this story. Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling. If she publicly announces that she feels that fan fiction infringes on her rights as an author then I will immediately take the necessary steps to delete this document. Mission 0: Existence 

There is currently a very large group of people massing in front of my door.  There is a distinct possibility that in a few seconds, I will cease to exist.

I'm sorry; I'm being presumptuous, aren't I?  After all, I've not even introduced myself and yet I'm expecting you to care about my eminent demise.  I've gotten quite comfortable dealing with creatures condemned to live on a single plane of the time-continuum but I sometimes forget your limitations. 

Let's start over, shall we?

Greetings, Muggle. Today, you have the great honour of conversing with the Chaotic, Accidentally Sentient, Magic being that protects Hogwarts. (I'm assuming that you know about Hogwarts. This is a forum where Muggles share their fantasies about the wizarding world, correct?) It would please me greatly if you referred to me as "Casm". I'm also known as the "Chamber of Requirements" but that's a rather lousy name for a sentient being.

I'm sure that you're telling yourself  "wait! How can the person that writes such eloquent, beautiful sentences be a room? How did it come to exist?" Unless, of course, it's near dinnertime in which case you're probably seconds away from leaving me talking to myself.   Please, I urge you, stick around.  All I want is for someone to know about me before I have to go away.  I have a lot of memories to share and from your point of view, all the time in the world with which to tell you. 

Please?

Thank you. I promise you, you will not be disappointed. Now, I'd love to get started right away and tell you about the time I (well, it was a house-elf, but it was my fault) burned down one of the classrooms. (Hogwarts is an incredible place. The classrooms are almost, but not quite, sentient. I can distinctively recall hearing the walls screaming.) Or about my first kiss. I know, I know, how can a room kiss someone? You hardly know anything about me, how can you be expected to comprehend anything I do?

It all started on a beautiful, crimson day of October. The wind was happily whistling in the trees, birds were wildly flapping around and all was right with the world. A beautiful, fair-headed maiden walked towards the castle, dreaming of the lover that awaited her. Shit. I'm terribly sorry. For swearing and for this atrocious paragraph. There was this first year who really, really missed his grand-mother and…. well it's kind of embarrassing for both of us…

So, as I was saying, I was born in October. At least, I think it was October. It took a while before I got access to a calendar and the Founders didn't bother to fit me with windows as it would have defeated the purpose of being a secret room of requirements.  I would tell you all about the glorious moment in which I was born, except I have absolutely no recollection of it.  I know that before I came to exist, I was just a room with a big "puddle" of magic.  A person, desiring something hard enough, could enter the room and the "puddle" of magic would provide it to them.  The magic would scan them and try to guess at what a proper match would be. After each visit to the room, the item, thing, idea they needed was refined until it matched exactly what they needed.  

One day, soon after Hogwarts was completed, a person of great intellect came to the room needing someone to talk.  The person visited me a lot.  The magic "puddle" had trouble providing something that would give the person proper feedback.  It kept trying to make something the person could talk to until it finally gained a conscience.  Me.  Unfortunately, I have no idea who my "parent" is. The first conscious image I recorded is my door closing on a shadow. It was a few hours before I connected myself to the rest of the castle so I'll probably never know.

Whoever created me probably had no idea he/she/it did so.  I know, now, that wizards destroy magical objects that can think on their own.  They are (and rightly so) viewed as a threat.  Fortunately, I was a very shy "child".

Some time after being born, I was visited by a human that desperately required course notes for a class she had missed. 

I obliged and when she left, I felt a deep pain in the centre of my very being. (Amusingly enough, she told some of her friends about the study notes and for about a decade, desperate students lingered about my corridor hoping for test answers.  Unfortunately for them, I was programmed to be incapable of doing anything immoral.)  The core of my magic remained in the room but a small piece had split itself along with the course notes.  Which meant that if I continued to do my assign duty and provide what was required of me, I would eventually lack the magical potency necessary to maintain myself in a comfortable state of existence.  

I was bleakly contemplating my probable demise when a house-elf entered me. Amazingly, I was ceased by a strange compulsion and possessed the poor thing.  Corporeality is quite an interesting state.  It was there that I learned that on my right wall (strangely enough, when I am not needed, my walls are red) I have this strange orange stain resembling a palm tree. But I digress.  I (firmly lodged in the house-elf's head) headed out to the groundkeeper's shed, took a bug spray and deposited it into myself. I then left the house elf (which exited me quite confused. It would be some time before I forged a more honest relationship with the house-elves.)

A few seconds later, a girlish scream echoed in the corridor and a women leaped inside me.  She promptly took the bug spray, leapt back out and rescued the young men who had emitted the scream.  The poor lad had seen a cockroach. The women sprayed the bug dead and then looked around puzzled. (That reaction is very common. For a few years, I took mental snapshots of that precise look on people's faces when they realize that they have exactly what they need but can't exactly recall how what has happened.) It took me a while to realize that I can somehow travel in time. Or sense the future. I'm not sure which it is exactly but it's certainly been useful. 

I also realized that giving the women the bug spray hadn't required any magic. When I possessed the elf, I transferred all of myself into it and then transferred myself back into the room. Unless the room stops existing when I'm not there anymore. It's rather confusing but it works.

So ever since the bug spray, I get compulsions, strong hunches, flashes of intuition. Whatever you want to call it, I have it.   They lead me to something I must then give away to the next person to enter me.  That way, I can keep on existing.

I've had some good times. I've also had terrible moments of weaknesses.  Stay around, for a while and I'll tell you all about it.  Check up on me in, say, one of your weeks and I might just tell you about the time I had the most annoying urge to go buy a chamber pot.


End file.
